


Visiting Hours

by queermermaids



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Art Enthusiast Nile Freeman, Developing Friendships, Gen, Museums, Nile Freeman & Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani Friendship, Nile Freeman-centric, Racism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-19
Updated: 2020-10-19
Packaged: 2021-03-09 05:08:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,637
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27099361
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/queermermaids/pseuds/queermermaids
Summary: The first time Nile and Joe go to a museum together, where they talk about their relationships with art.
Relationships: Nile Freeman & Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani
Comments: 6
Kudos: 48





	Visiting Hours

**Author's Note:**

> Sometimes building a friendship with one of your new immortal teammates means going to museums and talking about racism you've experienced while enjoying the arts. Also eating expensive, not very good museum food.
> 
> More descriptive warnings are in the end notes! Enjoy!!
> 
> [Title comes from "Visiting Hours" by Essex Hemphill.](http://www.divasofverse.com/2018/06/visiting-hours-by-essex-hemphill.html)
>
>>   
> The government pays me  
> nine thousand dollars a year  
> to protect the East Wing  
> So I haunt it.
>> 
>> Visiting hours are over.  
> The silent sentry is on duty.  
> An electric eye patrols the premises.  
> I’m just here  
> putting mouth on the place.
>> 
>> Modigliani whispers to Matisse.  
> Matisse whispers to Picasso.  
> I kiss the Rose in my pocket  
> and tip easy through this tomb of thieves.
>> 
>> I’m weighted down with keys,  
> flashlight, walkie-talkie, a gun.  
> I’m expected to die, if necessary,  
> protecting European artwork  
> that robbed color and movement  
> from my life.
>> 
>> I’m the ghost in the Capitol.  
> I did Vietnam.  
> My head is rigged with land mines,  
> but I keep cool,  
> waiting on every other Friday,  
> kissing the rose,  
> catching some trim.
>> 
>> I’m not protecting any more Europeans  
> with my life.  
> I’ll give this shit in here away  
> before I die for it.  
> Fuck a Remb-randt!
>> 
>> And if I ever go off,  
> you’d better look out, Mona Lisa.  
> I’ll run through this gallery  
> with a can of red enamel paint  
> and spray everything in sight  
> like a cat in heat.  
> 

Nile deserves a break, 3 months straight training and back to back missions. And so the morning after their latest mission, clean, slightly rested and full from breakfast, Andy announces a few days off. 

Nile woops, and Andy gives her a squeeze at the back of her neck, before going back to her room saying, "I'll be asleep all day. Have fun."

Nile drinks the rest of her coffee contemplating what she was going to do. Nicky and Joe were talking with each other about their plans.

She gets dressed and goes into town with them. They take the car for food shopping, while she goes for a walk around. They seem to be stationed near some major city, and she wonders until she finds herself among the art district.

She sees a museum, standing outside the large windows looking in while people walk in. She turns from the door, going back to the way she came, but not before some one hands her a flyer. Nile grabs it, and walks away.

She helps Joe and Nicky carry the food into the house, and she takes a midday nap. Normally she would be training or trying to stay awake in the middle of a mission, and letting her sleepiness take over was worth it.

She wakes up to the smell of dinner, and goes to join the rest of them at the table. Joe and Nicky made a full course meal, talking about how much they missed having the time to do this. For Andy and her, and with each other.

Afterwards, eating multiple plates of the desert they also made, Joe slides the flyer for the exhibit she left laying around onto the table.

"I found this with your stuff left in the kitchen. This seems interesting and I'm thinking about going, do you want to come with?" 

Joe seems excited, giving her a small smile. Nile is less so, and she knew exactly why she was so hesitant. But she does want to go, and so agrees.

  
  
  


After a lazy morning sleeping in, the next afternoon Joe and her go to the museum.

Joe asks as they stride through the lobby, "What kinds of art do you like Nile?"

"Sculptures, mostly, though I like photography too. What's yours?"

"I don't have one." He says plainly, with a shrug. "I draw, I paint, I do calligraphy, I've never found a touch for sculpting. I know in at least one safe house in Scandinavia there are several daguerreotypes I experimented with, and photos and film too."

They were silent for a bit, and it grew awkward as they walked through the lobby to the elevators. As they looked to where the advertised exhibit was, chose that floor and waiting for their lift, she spoke.

"I used to work at a museum," and Joe perked up. "As security, a couple of jobs before I enlisted."

"Really?"

"I was hopping from job to job once I had to quit college because of the cost. My dad KIA, and so me and my brother got the GI bill, which could cover some college tuition, not all. I didn't want to be swimming in debt, and I quit to work."

They made it to their floor, and started walking though. They stayed in step, Joe following Nile's lead and not walking away from her when she took longer to look at a piece. 

She sighed, "It kinda sucked, I'm not going to lie."

"I was so idealistic when it came to museums. But working security killed it. I would be radioed in whenever there was "someone suspicious", bet exactly who that looked like?" She shot Joe a sardonic look and he raised his eyebrow and nodded.

"There was a dad and his son, teenager, who went to a couple of exhibits. They asked me questions, and were nice right when they came in. I was on shift with another guy, and he kept radioing in about them. I made sure to thank them for coming, once they made it back to the ground floor. Everyone deserves a good time at a museum, not dealing with racist assholes."

"It kept happening, school trips, families, adults. Even when there was an exhibit about Black people from Chicago or Black people in general, still the expectation to guard them as loss prevention. As though that old ass museum wasn't around long enough to profit off of us. How much of that art only existed because someone cheated them out of their worth, them or their parents, or grandparents? You know." And Joe nods.

"There was this kid that came in all by herself, got right off the bus at the station outside and went on a day long tour of the museum. Floor to floor, and they wanted me to keep watch on her. Got a lot of looks when I just didn't while she was at the gift shop. Had a sit down with my manager after that, which was ridiculous. There was a security sensor at the door and multiple cameras. The cashier was already watching her. And I that was the last straw for me, Joe you have no idea how much I wanted to yell at my boss."

Nile starts whisper yelling, remembering the outrage she felt then and let that anger come out, finally. "It's because this kid was alone, or she took the bus or they just assumed she came from the South side. Every and all Black people are criminals just waiting for no one to watch. I grew up in that area you learn exactly what desperation looks like before someone steals something. She was just a kid, who liked art just like I do, of course I'm not going to follow her like she'll steal something straight off the wall. What the fuck!"

They were still walking through the exhibit. Not really paying attention to the pieces on the wall, or displayed on the floor, just each other, listening intently.

"Anyway I quit after that. Night security, a couple of other odd jobs, and then I enlisted." And now she's here, next to Joe. Walking though an institution he saw the formation of.

It would be good to stay open with him, about her life before all of this. Start building the friendship that will keep her from being as alone as she's felt before. And not going through the motions like how Andy wanted her to do. They weren't just going to be a team partnered for missions and no connections otherwise, Nile knew after these few months. They were not just Andy's soldiers. Nile planned on being their friend.

"And you haven't been to a museum since right?"

"Yeah, finding Andy's Rodin made my life, when we hid in the cave."

Joe hums.

"Over the years, I have found my art work in museums. It was in libraries first, my old calligraphy from schooling. Then as museums started becoming more popular, some of the works others patronaged, and my causal art of Nicky and our travels I lost, all in museums. We separated a lot last century, and I never told Andy that I found one of Quynh, and left her after image behind. She would have wanted it, or would have burned it."

"A lot of my work called 'anonymous' or 'nameless', credited to someone else, and inside a place I couldn't even visit until recently."

"Seriously, oh my god." _Of course_ , Nile thought.

"My own art, claimed by infants who will never know me, and displayed in museums who didn't even have the courtesy to designate an entrance for me to enter."

That didn't feel as recent for Nile, but for Joe she supposes, that was just a small portion of his long life. Before the Crusades, centuries he's been living. It is still hard for her to imagine living that long, now when she felt as though time was moving at breakneck speed around her. Only three months have passed since she's joined them, what will a year feel like, or hundreds?

She did wonder though, "So how? Did you-?"

"Yeah we broke in." He snorts out a little laugh, "Something mission related. I do remember Booker slipping on the freshly waxed floors and landing hard." Joe smiles, it crinkling his eyes, before it fell and his face closed up. 

She knew that there would soon be a time and a place to talk about Booker, and she didn't want to ruin their day. So she moves closer to the art they were talking in front of, and read the plaque aloud.

"The Rose." A mixed media piece with a photographs of roses wrapping around a painted dark-skinned woman and child sitting in a living room of a modern home. It was beautiful, and Nile pointed out that the refection of the flowers in the wall mirror were painted. Joe's eyes lit up as he took in the details, and he pointed out to her that the roses were reflected in the mother and child's eyes as well.

They moved through the floor, taking their time because they had plenty of it. It was nice to be with Joe, talking about aspect of pieces that interested them.

They made it to the end of the exhibit, going back the way they came to look over the art not seen while they were talking. It was fulfilling and rejuvenating to be among her favorite hobby, and not feel unwelcome and alienated. Joe's presence next to her made it feel better. 

Comradery in the face of eternity. She'll invite him out next time.

"Come on, I want to see what ridiculously expensive food they have in the caf." She knocked her shoulder against Joe's playfully and lead them away from the wing.

**Author's Note:**

> The racism described is racial profiling (Nile experiences but not towards herself) and segregation (Joe references it).
> 
> leave kudos/comments/questions if you like and thank you for reading! :)


End file.
